


If I Should Fall Behind

by brooklinegirl



Category: Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-10
Updated: 2012-01-10
Packaged: 2017-10-29 08:04:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/317629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brooklinegirl/pseuds/brooklinegirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for: anansigirl in the Yuletide 2007 Challenge: <i>I find myself clutching his shoes to my chest and staring blankly out the window into the dark winter day, and I wonder, how will it be when someday I get used to this?</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	If I Should Fall Behind

**Author's Note:**

> great and meaningful thanks to mrsronweasley for fantastic beta work!

Every time I am left alone, I have this sort of flash of concern - shouldn't I have gotten used to it by now? After all these years of it, should even this become mundane? The human brain has surprising resilience, Henry would say. Things too bizarre to contemplate become - normal, after a while. Or they should. You'd think they would, if you were standing on the outside.

I never considered the fact that I might get used to this. I don't see how I ever could. Once again, I am left here with a pile of Henry's clothes, still warm from his body, in a crumpled heap on the floor. I've been left like this many, many times before, and there is, perhaps, a sort of numbness as I carefully pick up the clothes, lay them on the bed, sort through and fold them. The blue sweater I gave him for Christmas four years ago, unraveling a little at one cuff, but still one of his favorites. The heavy corduroy pants, dark and warm, perfect for this type of weather (it is freezing outside, the snow thick on the ground, and the wind rattles the windows in their frames. I wonder if it is cold, when Henry is now). His socks, still tucked inside of his shoes, hanging out limply like they are waiting for him to come back, too.

I find myself clutching his shoes to my chest and staring blankly out the window into the dark winter day, and I wonder, how will it be when someday I get used to this?

***

He's been leaving me since I've known him. The first time was so long ago, it seems like something I maybe read in a book, once. How do I not come to expect this?

I am holding Alba to my breast, which is so full of milk it is aching. "This is supposed to be _natural_ ," I say to Henry, trying for the lightness of humor, but it comes out full of the frustration that is close to overwhelming me.

Henry, leaning close beside me on the bed, peers down at Alba, who is miserably rooting at my breast yet refusing to take the nipple. "She should be the one who knows what she's doing," he says, and his huge hand is resting on the back of her downy head. "What's the matter here, kid? Are you slow?"

He's trying to lighten the situation, too, but anger shoots through me, quick and sudden, and I want to smack his hand away from my daughter. I want him to take this seriously. I want him to fix things - I want to know how to fix things myself - I want Alba to take the fucking nipple in her mouth and _eat_ , for Christ's sake. "Leave her alone," I say shortly, trying to breathe through the quick pulse of resentment.

"I don't think she takes it personally, Clare." Henry pulls back now, and it's bad, when we both get angry like this at the same time. Two adults and a miserable child at my breast and none of us have the faintest idea how to handle the situation. "She doesn't know I'm mocking her."

" _I_ know, Henry," I snap. I shift position, trying again to coax her to take hold on my nipple.

Henry sighs in exasperation. "What if you - " He trails off, but I don't care, I don't care at all, I'm not even listening, because Alba almost has it, she's nearly there, and then she's on it, and the sheer relief of her drawing milk out of me is glorious. I turn, triumphant, but Henry isn't beside me anymore, only his clothes settling to the bed with the softest sigh.

"Oh," I say weakly, and turn back to my daughter, our daughter, our brilliant, brilliant daughter, who has taught herself this talent, this tough thing, right here, all on her own. I brush my thumb over her cheek, so soft you would not believe, and hold her close, as she eats.

***

When I was nearly fourteen years old, I asked Henry what it felt like.

"Everything fades, even before I'm gone." He was lying on his back in the meadow, one leg crossed over his bent knee. The grass was long, casting shadows on his face. He looked relaxed; he looked happy. He liked explaining things to me, the things he chose to explain, the safe things. He had one hand resting on my knee - above my knee, really, what could be called my thigh, and he hadn't noticed yet. Even while I was making conversation, my heart was beating a little bit faster and I was holding very still, hoping he wouldn't move his hand, hot and heavy against my skin.

"It feels tenuous, as though -" He stopped, and said, "Fragile," offering the definition up at me as though I were a small child.

"I know what tenuous means," I said sharply.

"Okay," he agreed easily. "Okay." His thumb was stroking very softly at the skin just above my knee, and I settled down as he continues. "I feel very shaky, and a little bit sick, and it's as though the whole of reality _lurches_." He made a kind of twisting motion with his hand up by his head, like he was winding a watch, then letting it go. He shook his head, and then tilted it to look up at me, sitting above him in the grass. "I'm not explaining it well. It's like getting the breath knocked out of you. It's like stepping through the looking-glass." He stopped, his hand holding onto my leg, tight, like he was grounding himself. "It's not fun."

"Oh." I sat there quietly, and when he drew his hand away from my leg, I shivered all over, suddenly cold in the summertime heat of the meadow.

I hadn't wanted to know the logistics. I had wanted to know what it _felt_ like. For Henry, when he left me. I had wanted to know how he _felt_.

***

The last time he leaves me, he looks so young. He is as old as he was when I last saw him - he has lines next to his eyes, and he looks so much like himself that I find myself startled. I'm never prepared, not once in all these times, never _once_ , and that seems so unfair, somehow.

But he came to me, middle aged, yet young, so _young_ compared to how I am now. I don't feel old; I don't feel that different from how I felt when he died. I am constantly missing him, but I feel like I spent our whole life together missing him, or waiting to miss him. This has just been a longer period of waiting than before, I tell myself, but again: I never did get used to it.

When he is gone again, and I know for certain that it is the last time - for _certain_ , and how strange is that, how deeply and bizarrely strange, when I have never had to be certain of that, in all this time, in all these years of Henry leaving me? He was never leaving me for the last time, not even when my hands were warm with his blood as he lay dying in front of me. That was just another step; that was just another time he left me, for a while.

Transitory, I am thinking, as I am holding his clothes in my wrinkled hands, standing there in the too-bright sunlight, watching the surf outside my window rush in, then chase itself back out, again and again. Every moment of my life with Henry felt transitory up until right now; every moment fleeting, because I never _knew_ , you see, when he'd be coming or going, not since the day I'd found him in the library and we'd been allowed to _really_ begin. There hadn't been a list, from that point on. There hadn't been any rules.

I pull his clothes close to me for a moment, closing my eyes and holding them tight to my chest as though Henry is still here. I allow myself this, and then I straighten my back as much as I am able, and blink my eyes open. I take a deep breath, and lay the clothes on the table, folding them with care and setting them on a chair.

I take my seat and pick up my teacup with a steady hand. The tea is still warm; he wasn't here long. I hold the cup in both hands, letting it warm my skin, and sip it slowly, watching in the bright morning light as the sea rushes in, and out, again, and again.

the end


End file.
